SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

ARCHEOLOGY AT QUARAI

Scientific archeology arrived at the Pueblo of Quarai in August, 1913, with the beginning of the Summer School of American Archeology on the site. This was an archeological field school conducted jointly by the School of American Archeology, the Museum of New Mexico, and the University of New Mexico. On August 21, the first day of the field school, the Museum acquired the site in a ceremony at Quarai. The apparent owners, Senator William M. McCoy and J. P. Dunlavy and John W. Corbett of Mountainair, transferred the title of the forty-acre tract to the Museum of New Mexico. [26]

Figure 50. Quarai on August 26, 1913. In the foreground is Mound A, with the School of American Research excavations in progress. Just above the mound is the Lucero House, showing signs of deterioration on the enclosing wall. The house appears to be just behind the mound, but this is an effect produced by Lummis's camera lens. The walls of the convento have all fallen to within a foot or two of the tops of their rubble mounds, and the east wall of the nave has fallen into the church. Courtesy Southwest Museum, # 24837.

The Field School conducted an initial survey of the pueblo, church and convento, and surrounding area. From August 26 to August 28, Charles F. Lummis rephotographed the area. The students prepared a detailed map of the church and convento complex and a sketch map of the upper Quarai valley. [27]

The Field School accurately measured the church and convento. The sizes they found for the components of the church are within inches of more recent measurements. Outside the east wall of the church, the sacristy (room 4) had recently been excavated, apparently by treasure hunters. Lummis photographed its walls, which descended into the rubble mound covering most of the rest of the convento, and the plan showed the outline of the room with its measurements and the note, "room below level." The walls of the two-story room at the northeast corner of the church (room 6) stood to a height of about ten feet above the rubble.

To the east, the top two or three feet of the walls of the best-preserved rooms along the hall showed above the rubble mound. They appear in the background of several of Lummis's photographs. The Field School plotted the outlines and measurements of rooms 11, 12, 13, and room 10A in the south end of the corridor, as well as about forty-three feet of the west wall of the hallway. In addition, they marked in the north wall of room 15, the east wall of rooms 15 through 18, and the south wall of room 18. [28] They did not recognize any of the rooms of the east courtyard, but plotted the east terrace wall and rooms 48, 49, and 58. They construed the terrace wall and the east wall of the old granary (rooms 47, 50, and 51) to be the outline of two other rooms.

The map of the valley accentuates the Lucero acequia system and the terraces. The acequia was dry by 1913, but the dam and ditch were visible. Lummis photographed the visible remains of the dam, and the map showed both its location and the first several hundred feet of the acequia. The Field School paced out the major components of the terraces. Their rough plan was the first map of the terrace system in the Quarai Valley. [29]

Figure 51. The area of the sacristy of Quarai in 1913. Lummis stood on top of the stub of the wall of room 6 to take this photograph. Just past the corner of the transept, the hole excavated into the sacristy can be seen. In the middle ground the walls of rooms 11, 12, and 13 have all fallen to heights of about one or two feet on the side toward the camera. On the east side, the walls stand four or five feet above the sloping rubble. Courtesy Southwest Museum, # 24838.

The Field School worked out a plan of the pueblo mounds. It did not correspond closely to more recent maps because the surveyors made an extremely subjective division of the pueblo into room blocks. The principal mounds can, however, be recognized. The Field School designated the present mound A as mound E on their plan, for example. They indicated the North House as a large unlabelled rectangle north of the church and convento. They apparently considered the Lucero House to be out of the area of the plan.

Probably the most striking detail on the plan is the depiction of a protective wall enclosing the pueblo of Quarai. No other visitors to the site mentioned such a wall, nor did the detailed model of the pueblo made the next year by J. P. Adams show it. It was probably the product of the perceptions of that particular Field School, based on random alignments of rubble. [30]

The Field School returned to Quarai in 1914. Along with the regular field work, J. P. Adams surveyed the site and prepared a topographic map of the mounds and ruins. During the last part of 1914, commissioned by the Museum of New Mexico, Adams built a model of Quarai as it might have looked in the seventeenth century. [31] The Museum displayed the model at the Panama-California Exposition that opened at San Diego, California, in January, 1915. After the closing of the Exposition, the model resided in the Governor's Palace. [32]

Jesse L. Nusbaum, Superintendent of Construction for the School of American Archaeology and Museum of New Mexico, inspected the condition of the Salinas missions in July, 1916. His photographs of Quarai show no significant changes to the structures. In one picture, a section of a wall of the North House can be seen behind the church standing to a height of seven or eight feet. [33]

The Museum of New Mexico lost title to Quarai in 1916. For the next sixteen years the mission property remained in private hands. During this time, the town of Punta de Agua built a new acequia system down the Quarai Valley. The construction took place between 1916 and 1919, and the acequia was in operation by April 4, 1919, when it was surveyed by E. M. Fenton. The new acequia began at a spring about 750 feet up Zapato Creek from the old dam, and followed a different course down the edge of the arroyo. It supplied water to twenty-two tracts and flowed along the south side of the town of Punta. [34]

In 1932, after a long legal battle, the Museum of New Mexico managed to repurchase the land, making it possible to continue with the plans for excavation and stabilization of the ruins. The Museum began large-scale excavations in 1934. Under the general supervision of Edgar L. Hewett, Sam F. Hudelson began work on the church of Concepción de Quarai on June 1. Paul Hudelson became the director of reconstruction and excavation on July 8. Donovan Senter, a student archeologist, was Hudelson's assistant. [35]

On July 9, the workmen began excavations in the area of the sacristy, where they were to build a buttress to support the northeast corner of the transept. They found the crosswall dividing the sacristy into two smaller rooms, and about ten feet below the surface they reached the flagstone floor. [36] The workmen began excavation on the western half of the sacristy and the area of the doorway through the wall into the east transept on July 18. They followed the flagstone floor of the sacristy through the doorway into the church.

The excavators began work on the east wall of the church on July 20. They found that the wall had fallen into the church in a single mass. It covered the nave in a layer about four feet deep, with most of the stones in their original relationships. On July 23, the workmen began clearing the loose rock along the facade, in preparation for removing debris from the interior of the church. They soon revealed the rooms of the baptistry at the southwest corner of the church. The tops of the walls of these rooms were about two feet below the surface of the rubble.

As workers with the Civilian Conservation Corps removed the thick mass of material left by the fallen east nave wall within the church, burned wood began to be found in the older fill beneath. Donovan Senter described the stratigraphy. He found the fill to be ten feet deep where the east wall had fallen, and six feet deep in the transepts and apse. Most of the fill was wind-blown deposits. A half-inch thick layer of white gypsum wall plaster covered the flagstone floor. Above this was a layer of dirt, some of which was probably washed from the interior surfaces of the church walls, the roof, and the choir loft, mixed with blown sand and some rock from the walls. [37]

Figure 52. Excavations in the church of Quarai, first week of August, 1934. This photograph was probably made by Donovan Senter. The fill has been emptied from the church for about the first thirty feet on the east side, except for a block left in the southeast corner. On the west side the fill remains to within about ten feet of the front wall. Floor level can be seen at the front door, where the lintel has already been installed about one foot too low. The lintel of the west window of the nave has been reinstalled, and the wall rebuilt above it. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 6676.

Figure 53. Removing the fill from the nave of Quarai, first week of August, 1934. The fallen east wall of the nave can be seen behind the workmen, with the stones still in approximately their original relationship to each other. The workmen are standing about on the original floor of the church. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 6675.

A distinct layer of burned material from the roof had fallen onto the dirt layer, covering most of the interior. In the south end of the nave Senter could see a second layer of burned material from the choir loft beneath the roof material. The dirt, scattered rock, and layers of burned material added up to a fill thickness of about three feet.

Above the layer of burned material the excavators found a stratigraphic record of the continuing decay of the building after the roof was lost. In the nave this consisted of another layer of dirt and blown sand, then the fallen east wall, and a final layer of blown sand and some dirt. In the transepts the sequence was the same, without the four-foot-thick layer of fallen nave wall.

Between July 31 and August 15, the CCC cleared the southern forty feet of the sixty-foot nave. Senter found five burials in this southern two-thirds of the nave. Four of these had been interred above the flagstone floor in the clay and scattered stones fallen from the wall, but before the roof burned. [38] The burning beams had scorched several of the skeletons when they fell. The excavators found the fifth burial just inside the entranceway of the church, below the flagstone floor. [39]

The excavations found "a number of vegas [sic] in very fragmentary condition," all charred. One three-foot long piece, apparently from the choir loft, preserved its carved surface. Of these carvings Senter says, "he who cut it must have had some knowledge of geometry." He found it against the east wall of the nave, about six feet from the southeast inner corner of the church, and less than a foot above the flagstone floor in the layer of burned material attributed to the choir loft. A second large beam fragment came from the same layer, against the east wall eleven feet from the southeast corner. [40]

Senter returned to the University of New Mexico in late August, and Albert G. Ely took his place as archeologist. The CCC continued clearing the church with Ely supervising. They found thirty-six burials in the fill above the flagstone floor, most of them in the transept.

Only fragments of the altar bases in the transepts remained. Traces of white plaster still adhered to the surfaces. Ely described the results of Governor Marín del Valle's efforts in the sanctuary: "The high altar had been completely destroyed, and also the greater portion of the three steps which lead from the transept to the apse." The western three feet of the steps remained, with traces of a wooden tread on the "first" step, probably the southernmost. Treasure hunters had hacked a large tunnel, five feet wide and four feet high, through the north wall of the apse. Although never mentioned by Ely or recorded on any plan, the excavations located the platforms in front of the side altars and the stairs to the main altar. These are visible as rectangles of packed earth outlined by the flat slabs of the flagstone floor of the church. The platforms probably had wooden beams forming their edges, but no traces of these can be seen in the photographs. [41]

Figure 54. The west transept and apse of the church of Quarai in the fall of 1937. In the northeast corner of the transept the west side altar base still stands, and closer the last traces of the main altar stairs remain at the west side of the apse. The socket for the stair bannister on the corner of the apse has been filled. In the foreground at the lower right corner of the picture, the top of the east side altar base is just visible. The surviving flagstone of the transept can be seen, and the rectangular areas of bare dirt in front of each of the altars. High on the west wall of the transept, patches of white wall plaster can be seen. Some of this patch still survives today. High in the apse the horizontal socket of the retablo support beam runs beneath the sockets of the apse roof vigas. Above these, the severe collapse around the sockets of the transept roof beams is visible. This collapse was caused by the burning out of the main viga that ran across the north face of the transept just under the corbels of the transept vigas. It supported the transept vigas over the mouth of the apse. One description of the same area on the east side of the apse stated that about four feet of the thickness of the masonry had fallen away from around the beam sockets. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 87726.

Albert Ely left Quarai in late April or early May to write his thesis, using the excavations as his topic. CCC excavations continued in his absence, probably under the direction of Reginald G. Fisher, who mapped the church and convento in May. The work located the square kiva in the friary patio. [42] Ele Baker arrived about August, 1935, in time to supervise the removal of the last foot or so of fill and clean the floor features. Baker resumed the excavations of the convento where Ely left off. [43]

In the last of the fill in the square kiva, Baker noticed a large percentage of white "gypsum" plaster. On the floor, he found a "fire pit, altar, and 'sip-o-phe' [sipapu]," [44] but observed no artifacts. [45] However, at some point the excavation recovered most of a large Salinas Redware chamber pot from the kiva, presently on display in the museum of Quarai. The hand-written label "K-1" (kiva 1) can be seen on the side of the pot.

Baker worked at Quarai from August, 1935, to the end of April, 1936. [46] During this period he excavated rooms 19 and 20 in the main part of the convento, and finished emptying the residence hall. Then he cleared all of the second courtyard to the east, and the northern portion of the rooms on the southeast. Other than the map made by Ele and Jewel Baker on March 20, no field records or notes survive from this period of work. [47]

While excavating the convento, Baker tested mound A and plaza C, in order to have a better idea of the stratification and prehistory of the pueblo. [48] His test in plaza C found only five sherds of Glaze C and none of Glaze D. [49] Based on his findings in this stratification test, Baker suggested that Quarai had been abandoned during Glaze C times and not reoccupied until Glaze F times. Baker's conclusions were accepted into the "known" facts about Quarai. Hurt's reanalysis of Baker's work indicated that the frequency curve of ceramics found would argue for an abandonment from Glaze B times to Glaze E times, or about 1450 to 1600. Hurt, however, noted that some sherds of all three "missing" glaze wares have been found at Quarai. "These types seem to have had centers of manufacture by Pueblo Indians in other areas, and at Quarai their low frequency suggests that they were trade items." [50] Hurt pointed out that similar low frequencies of Glazes B, C, and D have been found at Gran Quivira and Pueblo Pardo, and suggested that Agua Fria Glaze-on-Red may have been manufactured at Quarai and in use during Glaze B, C, and D times, in place of these glaze-wares. Since Hurt has conducted the most extensive excavation and most intensive analysis of pueblo structures at Quarai, his evaluation should be considered definitive.

During his work in the convento and pueblo of Quarai, Baker seems to have excavated Mound J House. Photographs taken in the summer of 1935 seem to show it unexcavated, while pictures taken in the fall of 1937 show the walls visible. Since archeology stopped in April, 1936, this indicates that Baker must have excavated the ruins in 1935-36. [51]